So, I said to him,
"Harry Partch was an amazing bloke,
and what he did is amazing. I reckon
that he is one of the most extraordinary
phenomena in the entire history of music",
and he came straight back at me with,
"OK, Mr. Clever-Clogs, so how come
hardly anybody’s even heard of
Harry Partch, then, eh?" I opened
my mouth, then shut it again. Well,
he does have a point. What’s more, it’s
a point that’s a real conundrum. Look
at it this way. The evidence to back
up my claim is all there, bags of the
stuff, so it should be an open-and-shut
case. Yet, it’s like the proverbial
water to which you can lead a horse:
hardly anybody leads any horses to it,
and those that are can’t be made to
drink - as often as not they just turn
up their noses. Why?

The "horse"
is the ordinary, music-loving "man
in the street", who has to be forgiven
his ignorance because, as is ever the
case, he depends on the specialists
and experts - professional musicians,
musicologists, educators, writers etc.
- to "lead" him to the "water"
and persuade him that to take
it on board. The ignorance of the majority
of those "leaders" is less
easily forgiven, for it’s they who supposedly
have a duty to accumulate, digest and
disseminate knowledge of "important"
things, ultimately for the enlightenment
of Mr. Joseph Public.

Maybe I’m doing this
majority an injustice. Perhaps they
have all examined the evidence and argument.
Perhaps they are all unwilling to accept
it. Perhaps they have all mistaken Norman
LeBrecht’s tongue-in-cheek dismissal
of Harry Partch as a "crackpot
inventor" as a serious conclusion.
Yet, even if that is so, it doesn’t
let them off the hook: they do not
have a duty to suppress what they don’t
go along with.

Yet, they can, and
they do, dismiss the Partch phenomenon.
It seems to defy logic, because there
is involved so much that strikes right
at the very foundation of this stuff
we call "music". Possibly
therein lies the answer to the conundrum
- nobody likes things that strike at
the very foundation of their livelihoods!
However, for anyone who’s prepared to
risk dipping his snout into this particular
pool of knowledge, there’s no denying
the insights to be gained. Moreover,
the theoretical and practical, experimental
studies emerging from Partch’s work
would be immensely instructive - and
probably revelatory - to pretty well
all musicians and music students. Would
it be such a bad thing if, as Partch
implied, musicians joined the rest of
the artistic fraternity, and acquired
a real understanding of "the
science of their art"?

However, with the World
as it is, most of the experts remain
in blissful ignorance and so, willy-nilly,
must the ordinary, music-loving Mr.
Joseph Public. Unless I’m preaching
to the converted, then before we go
any further, you at least should drink
a drop or two of the said water. You
might try, as a more or less useful
starting-point, my Musicweb article:
"A
Just Cause" . A quick skim
through should give you a working appreciation
of this "most extraordinary phenomenon".

Wholesale public recognition,
though, was never going to be on the
cards as far as Partch’s music is concerned.
The justly-intoned 43-note scale, which
marries his music and instruments, occupies
a universe utterly incompatible with
that of the 12-tone equal-tempered musical
mainstream. Partch’s music isn’t written
for, and is not playable by conventional
musical instruments. Admittedly, it
is possible to arrange his music
for certain "ordinary" instruments,
generally those of continuous pitch,
like the violin family and the human
voice. However, to resolve the 43-note
scale accurately may require instruments,
possibly extremely valuable instruments,
to be physically modified, which may
seem a less than attractive option to
their owners. In any case, the very
act of performance of any such arrangements
could do Partch’s cause more harm than
good (see my review of U.S.
Highball).

Almost from the day
he determined the path he’d tread, Partch
was well aware that the Music he wished
to create would stand a better than
average chance of dying with him. With
typical thoroughness, he set to and
did something about it. Just look at
the list in Philip Blackburn’s introduction
to the present video-tape recording:
"Harry Partch - composer, theorist,
writer, dramaturg, visual artist, philosopher,
flunky, musicologist, sound-sculptor,
furniture-maker, dish-washer, copy editor,
hobo, proof-reader, aesthete, man of
letters, publisher, record producer,
teacher, conductor, inventor, painter,
critic, gardener, librettist, storyteller
..." There are a good half-dozen
jobs which are concerned specifically
with the documentation and preservation
of his life’s work beyond his life’s
span.

Indeed, Partch had
commented that he regarded his life’s
work as a sort of "letter to the
world" and, pursuing the analogy,
intended his final composition to be
an "enclosure" - an afterthought,
appendage, or "gift". Sadly,
it turned out that his last composition
had preceded this declared intention.
As its title implies, Innova’s series
of six Enclosures, comprising
collected sounds, images and documents,
is an honourable attempt to plug the
gap. In fact these Enclosures, set alongside
the recordings Partch made on his own
Gate 5 label (now part of the
CRI catalogue), pretty well comprise
Partch’s entire recorded legacy - which,
pretty well, makes them priceless.

Partch’s vision of
"corporeality" is something
akin to ancient Greek theatre, allying
many diverse arts in such a way that
each reinforced the messages of the
others. Although this sounds similar
in principle to opera and ballet, what
sets it apart is a strong communal,
ritualistic element - which implies
that "live" performance is
an essential ingredient. Whilst film,
by its very nature, is obviously not
"live", Partch nevertheless
saw it as a medium capable of a degree
of corporeal expression. Madeline Tourtelot,
a photographer and film-maker of great
distinction, was very much of a like
mind. She collaborated with Partch on
several projects, the bulk of which
are the four short "art films"
that comprise this Enclosure 1.
By a happy chance, the films adopt differing
approaches to corporeality.

First, though, let’s
get the mundane matter of technical
quality out of the way. These films
show every sign of being produced on
shoe-string budgets. Even allowing for
my review copy being a PAL transfer
from NTSC, which itself is a transcript
of the original 16 mm. film, the quality
isn’t exactly dazzling. Soundtracks
reminiscent of the sort of sound (A.M.
only, of course) that we used to get
from portable "tinny trannies"
in the 1960s are complemented by the
sort of grainy, fuzzy images, with vaguely
unstable colour, such as we tend to
associate with those old 8 mm. "home
movies". It’s worth noting that,
in the introductory notes, both Philip
Blackburn and Partch himself refer to
the less than ideal quality of sound
and vision, the latter in particular
saying, ". . . I am concerned,
as well as film quality and sound quality
will permit me, with presenting ideas,
with the help of, or in spite of, technical
factors."

Ordinarily, of course,
such dismal technical quality would
rule a product right out of court, and
the prospective buyer would be pointed
firmly in the direction of more acceptable
alternatives. Here, though, we are not
dealing with the "ordinary".
In one sense, these are video equivalents
of 78 r.p.m. sound recordings of great
performers of yesteryear, recordings
whose wonder lies in the artistic inventiveness
and imagination of the recorded substance.
Yet, these films are more than that,
for they are unique - there are
no alternatives! Whilst our senses may
regret the poor sound and vision, our
hearts tell us that seeing such works
of genius through a glass darkly is
infinitely preferable to not seeing
them at all.

To the uninitiated
ear, Partch’s sound-world can be a bit
of a culture-shock. This has nothing
to do with just intonation which, when
all’s said and done, is the natural
mode of operation for any self-respecting
pair of ears. It does have something
to do with the "microtonality",
but not as much as you might expect.
The system of just intonation is like
a tree, with musical intervals for branches.
The further up the tree you go, the
thinner the branches, that is, the finer
the intervals. Some folks’ knee-jerk
reaction, on first hearing a bit of
Partch, is to call it "atonal".
Nothing could be further from the truth:
his music is infinitely more
tonal than anything by even Mozart or
Schubert!

Although Partch’s "microtonality"
uses many more, much finer intervals
than we are used to hearing, they are
all made of the same "wood",
all fashioned according to the identical
natural laws. Consequently, given a
half-decent chance - i.e. holding that
jerky knee in check! - our ears quickly
cotton on to them. By far the greatest
contributors to the "shock"
are Partch’s unique, exotic, other-worldly
instruments allied to - how shall I
put this? - his highly individual
musical style. I think I can safely
say that the only composers who sound
even the remotest bit like Partch are
to be found amongst those who followed
him!

Having developed his
highly refined and finely-structured
intonational system, you’d imagine that
Partch would have devised instruments
of sustained pitch (i.e. bowed, blown)
on which to perform his music, so that
the unaccustomed ear would have more
time to focus on the "new"
tonal relationships, to familiarise
itself with this finer line spectrum.
Maybe you’d imagine it - I know that
I would - but that isn’t what happened!
Inclined, as he generally was, to be
cantankerous and contrary, Partch instead
created mostly plucked string and percussion
instruments! Moreover, his abiding fascination
with the continuous nature of the sound-spectrum
- with the curvaceous beauty of tones
sliding and gliding between the fixed
pitches - is also of inestimable help
in muddying the aural waters for new-comers!

It starts to look as
if Partch was going out of his way to
make life difficult for us. However,
just intonation, microtonality and instrumentation
are merely the tools of his trade. Our
faltering zest for adventure is restored
by his performance ideal. In the films,
the corporeal approach means that our
appreciation of the unfamiliar music
is helped by the familiar visual images,
and thence the music, becoming familiar,
in turn enhances our appreciation of
the images.

For two reasons, then,
Rotate the Body in All Its Planes
is a wise choice of opening item. Firstly,
the images of gymnasts plying their
trade are unburdened by any dramatic
overtones of ancient myth or urban legend.
They are the most obvious and easiest
to appreciate in their own right, and
thus provide the longest lever with
which to prise open the music. Secondly,
in addition to his own instruments,
Partch uses a vocal chorus and a ten-piece
ensemble of conventional instruments
- two piccolos, three trumpets, two
trombones, a tuba and two percussionists
- which together provide a bit of an
anchor of familiarity in the sea of
strange sonorities. Certainly, the "circus
band" flavour he gives to the brass
is both familiar, apposite and humourous.
Mind you, other than to observe that
"natural" brass are by definition
justly intoned, I won’t even attempt
to go into the details of how Partch
squares these instruments with his intonational
system!

The scenario of Rotate
the Body is a straightforward display
of modern gymnastics - "modern",
that is, provided you ignore the now
rather quaint-looking men’s drills and
vests, and ladies’ "romper-suits"
with integral software support! The
filmed display was carefully structured,
in the manner of a balletic divertimento
or perhaps a baroque suite. Partch
first observed the gymnasts, recording
the sounds they made during their routines.
This gave him a general sort of metrical
reference for use whilst composing his
score. Tourtelot filmed the same exercises,
from various viewpoints, using both
static and moving cameras. The "simple"
matter of editing, of making the two
meet in the middle, provided the spark
that justified Partch’s - and Tourtelot’s
- corporeal vision. In spite of the
technological limitations, the images
are very artfully presented, combining
slow-motion, reverse-motion, still and
even inverted images to dazzling effect
- for example, trampolining becomes
a real eye-opener when you see the rotating
gymnast descend into the frame
and curve back up out of it.

Music and movement
are fused with considerable inventiveness.
Partch’s music not only underpins the
"pas d’action" in the expected
manner, but also furnishes what he describes
as "fanfares" and "applause"
whilst the chorus, playing on the words
of the title, conveys a feeling of "commentary".
These conspire to evoke the feeling
of "ritual" that Partch sees
as a cornerstone of corporeality. Rotate
the Body may be only nine murky
minutes long, but in that short span
Tourtelot and Partch seem to demonstrate
that the ethos of ancient Greek theatre
is alive and well, and living in latter-day
sports arenas.

Placing Music Studio
second on the tape was also a good idea,
as it immediately helps to quench the
curiosity aroused by the strange sounds
that we’ve just heard in Rotate the
Body. This film is doubly valuable
because Partch’s own dark-brown, growly
voice provides the narration. Tourtelot’s
scene-setting is deceptively cunning.
She establishes a mundane visual
mood - Partch arriving at and entering
his studio in Chicago, and settling
down to the task of packing LPs of his
music for posting to mail-order customers.
This is set against an aural mood that
is anything but mundane - Partch himself
outlining his corporeal philosophy and
the practicalities of his chosen path.
It is startling, as well as fascinating,
to hear him explaining the essentiality
of the visual/aural interplay whilst
watching this great man packing an LP
that he says "lacks half the take".
Like nothing else could, this crafty
contrast underlines the truly exhaustive
nature of Partch’s undertaking!

The balance of the
film is devoted to two related demonstrations.
Firstly, Partch goes from instrument
to instrument, describing and illustrating
something of the sounds and capabilities
of each. The warm ease of his voice
is in possibly inadvertent contrast
to the self-conscious stiffness of his
"on-screen" manner, but this
is a minor embarrassment when set against
the fascination of what we are witnessing
- my only real problem with this sequence
is that I was left wanting more of it,
a lot more!

The demonstration of
the Harmonic Canon, an instrument derived
from the "Monochord" used
by the ancient Greeks to investigate
and formalise their musical scales,
is particularly striking. Partch first
shows how it can play single, related
notes. Then, having rearranged the moveable
bridges under its multitude of strings,
with a few deft strokes he produces
a truly astonishing sonic miasma!

Perhaps, if you will
forgive the pun, even more striking
is the Marimba Eroica. Partch explains
that its fundamental tone, a subterranean
22 Hz., lies beyond the capabilities
of the film’s soundtrack - for that
matter, he could have added a prophetic
"and all but the most esoteric
of Twenty-First Century audio equipment"!
Thus, when he strikes the massive resonator,
"what you hear [is] chandeliers
rattling, window frames rattling, even
coffee cups in the kitchen, everything
but the Eroica." Luckily
for us, Enclosure 6 enshrines the top-notch
CBS recording of Delusion of the
Fury, produced in 1969 by no less
than John McClure, a recording which
conveys a very respectable impression
of this awe-inspiring sound.

Partch’s second demonstration
is something of a "practical application",
in which he shows how he prepared the
soundtrack for the film Windsong.
Here we start to get some idea of the
difficulties he faced. Having no suitably-trained
players available, he had to play all
the parts himself. Hence he had to record
the music using a form of "multi-tracking".
However, his tape recorder’s primitive
(analogue) over-dubbing facility expired
in a haze of multiplicative noise if
pushed beyond three dubbing cycles.
Thus he had to write the score in such
a way that all the parts lay within
his technical capabilities, and that
no more than four instruments were required
at any one time.

For the visuals of
this film, he had to mime to his recording:
as Partch said, "It couldn’t be
[recorded again], since I was playing
all the parts." As he also pointed
out that the "synching" of
sound and visuals, undertaken by himself
and the cameraman, is often obviously
approximate, it would perhaps be churlish
of me to carp about it, so I won’t.
Instead, I will drool over the - admittedly
fuzzy - colour photography, which gives
a fair impression of the striking appearances
of those astonishing sonic sculptures
that are Partch’s instruments, for example
the burnished wood of the marimbas,
or the light-glancing glass of the Cloud
Chamber Bowls.

In any case, it’s worth
any amount of the said "approximation"
to see Partch playing his Adapted Viola,
one of the very earliest products of
his "seduction into carpentry".
But why, oh why, when virtually all
the interest lies in the left hand that’s
carefully negotiating a multitude of
closely-spaced studs - the visible manifestation
of Partch’s 43-tone scale - does the
camera home in on the bowing
hand, which is doing nothing more than
any other, common or garden bowing hand?
A missed opportunity this may be, but
the melody that he is playing certainly
is not. In Windsong, he gave
to this instrument a haunting, achingly
soulful melody that penetratingly illustrates
his justly-intoned microtonality, affording
us a spine-tingling glimpse of the system’s
expressive potential, exploring a musical
realm that lies forever beyond the reach
of the fossilised scale of 12-tone equal
temperament.

Partch considers that
the corporeality of this film hinges
on the instruments themselves: they
are the subject-matter, "characters"
dramatised through the ritual of performance
and the mutually reinforcing aspects
of seeing and hearing them. Now, this
seems a bit curious, coming as it does
from one who railed against the "concert
cult" of Western European classical
music culture, for the two do not seem
all that far apart. Just to confuse
matters a bit further, Partch also said
that he had no problem with "concert
performance" of music as such.
As far as I can fathom, the resolution
of the paradox lies in the attitude,
both of performers and audience: Partch
objected, certainly not to the ritual
of performance and listening as such,
but to those who regarded mere technique
and technicality as the be-all and end-all
of musical performance - a bit like
the "hi-fi buff" whose philosophy
seems to be "never mind the music,
just listen to the sound quality".
In this film, there’s no danger of that:
it is a triumph of substance over surface
gloss!

The latter two films
are both in the "proper" corporeal
form, of enacted dramas wherein music
is a contributor to the artistic end,
rather than an end in itself. US
Highball is by some margin the most
substantial work on this tape. To quote
from my Kronos review (and save you
the trouble of looking it up!):

"Its text comes
from jottings Partch made in a little
notebook as he worked his way from California
to Chicago late in 1941. Why, in the
midst of depression, would he have done
that? . . . basically Partch felt isolated,
and having been invited by someone interested
in his work, he set off almost on a
whim: ‘[After] more than six years of
California depression, I jumped at the
chance of seeing some Midwest depression.’
Considering his journey took only about
a fortnight, Partch assimilated the
hobo subculture to a remarkable degree,
and expressed it eloquently and - be
warned! - idiomatically, through
both his words and his music. Originally,
Partch scored the music for Adapted
Guitar, so that he could perform it
himself, entirely independently. A year
or two later, having acquired a couple
of cohorts, he added Kithara and Chromelodeon
to the instrumentation. Finally, in
the mid-fifties he more fully re-worked
it, in the light of his developing art,
for a much larger ensemble of nine instruments
whose players also shared the vocal
line. Clearly, Partch cared a lot for
this work, which he developed in these
stages from a simple personal expression
to [encompass] a more universal statement
about the good old ‘human condition’".

Through its incarnations,
it remained essentially a vocal
drama, enacted by the musicians which,
I suppose, makes it a formal forerunner,
though on an altogether "higher"
artistic plane, of the rock ‘n’ roll
groups that emerged at around the time
of its last incarnation! It also remains,
in spite of its enlargement, a work
of singularly intimate expression,
and hence something that should be committed
to film with circumspection. Tourtelot
is nothing if not circumspect. She makes
no attempt to "enact" the
scenes implicit in the words, her film
simply inter-cutting between, on the
one hand, the instruments and the faces
of the players as they act out their
parts, and on the other, images of trains,
tracks, yards, and seemingly endless
tracts of mid-west countryside rolling
by. There are no fancy effects; the
film is lightly and simply spiced by
occasional bits of animated art-work
and colour filtering.

According to Partch,
each hobo is represented by one instrument
and the voice of its player. This is
supposed to lend "identity"
to the characters but, truth to tell,
knowing exactly who says what doesn’t
really make all that much difference
to the narrative. Anyway, the scenario
is not entirely self-explanatory, being
not so much a "story" as a
sequence of fleeting impressions and
incidents en route. In the pursuit
of corporeality, music, words and images
are closely interwoven, consistently
reflecting and reinforcing one another
as the hobos gripe and grumble, bicker
and cajole, trade experiences, advice
- and warnings. It is a very moving
portrayal, all the more valuable for
its "insider insights", of
these forlorn folk, forced into living
as stoic and cynical wanderers by powers
beyond their (and probably anybody else’s)
comprehension.

The sound is sometimes
confused, although this is almost inevitable
when there is so much to be contained
within very limited confines. However,
the voices, which are a bit too closely
miked, occasionally overload - and there
is a persistent sawtooth buzz. This
last is not itself a problem when the
soundtrack is loud, but does tend to
cause some intermodulation distortion.
Again, you need to set these discomforts
against the considerable intrinsic value
of the substance. Happily, in this film
the image quality has the advantage
of enhancing the "period feel".

The playing and vocal
exchanges have tremendous guts and enthusiasm:
the performers, including Partch himself
(on Kithara), clearly getting right
under the skin of the piece. US Highball
is a work that really "blows away"
the popular misconception of just intonation
as "all sweetness and light".
Partch makes much use of highly dissonant
intervals in his chuggingly, chuffingly
onomatopoeic "train noises".
By their very astringency, these throw
the moments of poignant quiet, like
lyrical islands in a sea of motor-rhythms,
into sharp relief. The final arrival
in Chicago, desperately anticipated
all through the "Leavings"
of various townships along the way,
is ominously brief, muted and unfulfilling.

The final film of the
four is the self-same Windsong
for which we saw Partch preparing -
or, rather, re-enacting the preparations
- in Music Studio. That "re-enactment"
came about because it was the making
of Windsong that prompted - though
"inspired" might be a better
word! - Tourtelot to suggest the idea
of a documentary about Partch’s instruments
and the process of preparing Windsong’s
soundtrack.

In Windsong
we find the fullest flowering, in these
four films, of Partch’s idea of corporeality.
Partch himself saw it as an "example
of adapting ancient myth to contemporary
American psychology". The Greek
legend of Apollo’s pursuit of Daphne
is transplanted to a Michigan sand-dune,
whereupon the love-struck Apollo and
the less-than-compliant Daphne are clearly
children of the James Dean era. Unlike
US Highball, Windsong
is a fully-enacted visual drama, a "silent
movie" whose scenario is suffused
with ritualistic overtones, in both
the subject-matter, its enactment, and
the interweaving of symbolic natural
imagery.

Although their subjects
are apparently very different, Windsong
and Rotate the Body have two
points of strong commonality: they are
both based on themes originating in
ancient Greece and, more importantly,
they both involve ritual, which
Partch regarded as possibly the
essential ingredient of corporeality.
Perhaps, then, I should not be surprised
to find that, of the four films, these
two provide the most aesthetically satisfying
experiences?

We also need to note
that in Windsong the visuals
preceded, and indeed prompted, the music.
Partch devised the musical segments
expressly to reflect the various scenes,
both to underpin the somewhat implicative
drama, and interact with the symbolic
themes - birds in flight, rippling water,
side-winder snakes, shifting sands,
trees and leaves. For the most part,
Partch reinforces "moods",
which makes the relatively few moments
of almost balletic synchronisation all
the more telling. A straightforward
example is the precise punctuation,
by musical beats, of Apollo’s heavy
footsteps as he sets out.

However, when Apollo,
in his rowing boat, tilts back his head,
cups his mouth and calls out, what you
hear fair rocks you back on your heels,
for it’s not a voice, but a cascade
of Harmonic Canon. This extraordinary
sonic miasma was eyebrow-lifting enough
when dispassionately demonstrated in
Music Studio; coming, seemingly,
from the throat of a young man, it is
a killer punch that dispels all doubt
- regardless of his appearance or intentions,
this is indeed no mere mortal! By such
means, in the proper corporeal manner,
the "loop" is closed. Partch’s
unique music is an astonishingly inventive
response to, and symbiosis with, the
visual element. It lends to the real
images an aura of unreality, to which
a more conventional music could only
aspire. Even the title shot is a wonder
to behold: sunlight glinting off water
to the singular strains of wood and
glass.

There is one curious
thing worth a mention. According to
Danlee Mitchell’s statement of the scenario,
"Desiring no part of Apollo’s intentions,
Daphne wills herself into [becoming]
a tree." In the film it looks,
implicitly, as if Apollo had had his
wicked way, and the distraught Daphne
then metamorphosed herself, causing
the guilty god to, in Mitchell’s words,
"get the heck out". Not that
it matters much: either way, it works.
Hang on a mo’: make that two
curious things: the credits say that
Tourtelot herself plays the part of
Daphne, with Rudolph Seno ... (that’s
as much as is visible!) taking the part
of Apollo. That Daphne and Apollo are
never on-screen at the same time is
explained by the "photography"
credits - "Daphne and Apollo"!
How’s that for back-scratching team-work?

As I’ve suggested,
the poor, and occasionally dire, technical
quality of these films betokens limitations
that are merely budgetary. Similarly,
the often rough-and-ready editing can
be put down to inadequacies of the machinery
available - and hence, again, comes
down to cash (or, rather, lack of it).
Ah! If only Tourtelot had had the resources
of such as MGM behind her! Yet, in one
sense, it is better as it is, because
by simple contrast the transcendent
artistry, pioneering vision and original
ideas shine all the brighter through
the dog-eared "packaging".
The knock-back taken by Partch’s music
is less of a problem than it might seem,
because most of that is preserved elsewhere
in rather better sound, if not in quite
the same form.

With perhaps the exception
of the relatively "straight"
documentary of Music Studio,
which nevertheless has its own inestimable
value, these films provide an all-but-unique
insight, a window into Partch’s world
of corporeality. More than that, they
afford us the rare privilege of observing,
however briefly, the workings of a Music
that is, in the words of the legendary
Monty Python, "something completely
different". If you’ve never even
heard of Harry Partch, then, my friend,
go forth and banish thine ignorance!

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